Unflinching
by Punzie the Platypus
Summary: ENDGAME SPOILERS. Before Professor Hulk and Rocket went to New Asgard to get Thor back, someone tried before them. Valkyrie visits Thor weeks after he killed Thanos and discovers his roomie and drinking situation; she tries in vain to get him back. 'Her mirror image was a disgusting, suffering mess. She understood why he couldn't stay like this and yet understood why he wanted to.'


**_Soli Deo gloria_**

**DISCLAIMER: I do NOT own The Avengers. Or Fortnite.**

**Poor Thor. If I lost my brother and my dad and my mom _and_ found out I had a deadly sister who then destroyed my homeland and then lost half my people to a madman who then killed half the people in the entire universe, I'd be depressed, too. **

New Asgard felt a little like home. It was constructed by the remnants of the survivors of Asgard. Half of the people were destroyed by Hela and her murderous conquest and half the people slaughtered by an intercepting Thanos, then another half dissolved into the air without a word—you do the math. New Asgard was barely bigger than a city along Norway's coast. They were a small but mighty crew. They settled into Norway with determination and embraced its Asgardian roots.

They moved on. Or, at least, they tried to.

Well, most of them tried to.

After the Snap, Valkyrie found herself the lowkey leader of the remainder of the Asgardian people. She tried passing the days anonymously by the docks, catching fish and passing time of day with the other fisherman, while resisting the centuries-old, once undeniable need to drink. It was hard to blend into the background when she was one of the leaders of the rescue off their refugee ship. Everyone on that ship knew her face, and now always came to her for advice, for guidance, and for leadership. She was before never a leader but a warrior, yet she found herself stepping into the vacant role well. There was something satisfying in aiding the people of Asgard.

Getting her hands dirty, making a difference among the people, she no longer picked up her incandescent sword to defend. There was peace among her people now. That was all that needed. They needed peace after all they suffered.

Yet, not everyone embraced the peace after the wake of war.

It wasn't surprising. Valkyrie even gave him time alone to grieve. She stayed away while he processed the last five weeks. He needed time to heal, and not just from the wound of his eye.

When she approached his cozy hut, she expected to find him brooding with his head covered by his hand, but willing to listen to her interests concerning New Asgard. She didn't expect the hot mess starting to grow roots into his dirty sofa chair.

She sat across from him, sandwiched between an ever-cheerful Korg and a meek Miek playing some kind of game on TV (it looked idiotic—if they found some childish amusement from it, she wouldn't deny them its stupid pleasure, but still, it was for _children_). The King of Asgard, raised from birth to inherit the ancient throne of his revered father, snored on his sofa chair as he hugged his empty gallon-size glass of beer to his belly. His hair grew out from his shaved hair from his brief pass in slavery; his thick beard claimed too much of his face. Bits of food and beer foam were entangled in its threads.

"What . . . happened?" Valkyrie finally said.

"Oh, you know. The Snap happened," Korg said. "Weren't you aware of that?"

Valkyrie scoffed at him. "Tell me he hasn't been like this since he came back."

"Um, yeah. Ever since he killed Thanos, I think," Korg said nonchalantly.

Valkyrie blinked, looking between Korg and Miek incredulously. She'd launched on an escape pod with them once Thanos's ship encroached upon their ship. The three of them led half of Asgard to safety. She never saw Thanos. Never saw the face of the alien who would change the entire world—and not in a good way.

Thor stayed with the remaining Avengers in the weeks afterwards. Then, one day, he just appeared. Korg and Miek announced his arrival but also announced that he didn't want any visitors. Valkyrie had never dreamed that the Thor she knew of old, the warrior who rejoiced in the victories of battle, would dare come home and never even just _casually _drop the fact that he killed the most evil villain in the universe into everyday conversation. But then, this broken man before her was surely not the Thor of old.

Valkyrie leaned forward and, finding a bag of chips, threw it at Thor. Rather than awaken him, it caused him to snort and shift, so now he cuddled the half-empty bag of potato chips along with his beer glass. Valkyrie had better luck throwing her boot reeking of fish and muck from the docks at him. It conked him on the head. He grunted and opened his eyes. "Hmmmm?"

"Oh, Thor, Valkyrie's here to see you," Korg said, waving.

Thor barely opened his bleary eyes. He was two seconds from swimming back in unconsciousness when Valkyrie stomped across the distance between them and slapped him.

"Thor!" Valkyrie said. "Wake up!"

"Oh, Val," Thor said through half-opened eyes, his smile too watery and his voice too slurred to be real. "You're alive. You're here!"

"Of course I'm here! Here's where Asgard now is, or did you forget that, like you forgot to tell me that _you _killed Thanos?!" Valkyrie demanded to know.

At the sound of that accursed name, a blue fire glowed inside Thor's bloodshot eyes. Angry energy flooded his veins; his jaundiced skin glowed with unworldly light as he rose from his comfortable place of slumber. His once burly arms, now pale from lack of sun, rose, flinging his beer glass to the sofa chair. His voice rose with the power of thunder in its echoes as he approached Valkyrie. The ghost of a champion came upon him as he said, "Don't say that name!"

Korg and Miek shrank back, surprised that this power still remained in their sequestered friend. But Valkyrie didn't even flinch. Because for her, here was the only Thor she knew; the one who came up out of the fraud. Here _he _was, what he'd been all along. "I was wondering when you'd be back," she said.

Almost as quickly as the lightning flashed, it faded into dark clouds. Thor almost fell back into his seat as he said, "I am not what I once was, Valkyrie." His eyes passed over her, falling on the fridge stocked with literally nothing but beer. "Why have you come?" he said, focusing back on her again even as his eyes flickered away.

"I've come to see the King of Asgard rise to his calling once more," Valkyrie said. "And, also, apparently to hear the great victory of your slaughter of Thanos."

Thor didn't rise up in agitated anger anymore. Instead he sunk back to his seat, almost trembling at the name. "That was no more a victory than it was to save just half the people of Asgard."

Valkyrie cocked her head. "I'd consider saving _anyone _from that genocidal bastard a victory. Also, _I _led that rescue, so _thanks_," she kicked Thor mercilessly, and he barely noticed, "for that."

Thor looked up at her through tangled, matted hair. "Do you think I can consider it a victory to kill Thanos, when I did it far too late?" He rose again. His voice was that of a haunted man, long plagued by guilt and self-loathing—a far cry from the confident, triumphant Thor of old. "I had the opportunity to kill him before he snapped his fingers. All six Infinity Stones were held in the gauntlet; all he had to do was snap his fingers. I attacked him like he was the last kill of my life—the only kill, really, that ever mattered." Thor's voice was slow, languishing over the painful memories. "I buried Jarnbjorn in Thanos's chest. I thought I did it. I thought I stopped the end of the world. I really thought I did it. My arrogance shaded my judgement one last time. He snapped his fingers, and that was it." Thor looked long and silently at the wall across from him. The cartoon noises of Korg and Miek's video game dulled into silence. He finally said, "All I did in killing Thanos was attempt to fix a mistake I never should have made. It didn't matter. I couldn't reset what he did. He destroyed the Stones. He destroyed our lives. All I could do was destroy him, and even that, in the end, didn't matter at all."

Valkyrie understood him, then. The survivor's guilt. Getting to live while others died. It should've made him want to live life more fully, in their honor. Instead, the haunt of his shame cast too vast a gloom to leave him any ray of light.

"All right." Valkyrie stepped forward, offering her hand. "You failed."

Thor looked up at her with tortured eyes. "Have you come to rub my failure in my face? Is that why you've come to visit me, after all this time?" he said in a low voice.

"No. I gave you some time alone, but obviously that was a _bad_ idea. It's not like you came to visit _me_, anyway," Valkyrie said. She pointed a finger at him. "You failed. It's true. People died. But that's what happens. It's just history. It happens over and over and over again. Is this what you're like after every battle?"

"Perhaps you underestimate the _scale _of this battle," Thor said. "_Half _of all life is gone, because _I _failed."

"Did you try to fix it?" Valkyrie said.

"Yes, but my team and I, we were too late. There's nothing more that can be done. It is what it is." Thor sat back, almost like giving up to the inevitable.

Valkyrie stared at him, just . . . blinking at him. "'It is what it is?' Just like that, you're going to just sit there on your ass and do _nothing_?!"

Thor rose to his feet. Normally he'd jump up as quick as a rabbit, but now he slogged up, groaning under the beer buzzing in his brain. "I would _jump _at the chance to do something. Anything, to get them back." Tears shone in his eyes but Valkyrie didn't flinch. "I have tried and failed and _nothing _I do has fixed _anything_! Asgard is gone, my parents are gone, my _brother _is gone . . ." He shook, from rage and sorrow. "Even if I could bring the other half of the world back, I could never get _them _back."

Valkyrie stared back at the god of thunder, unflinchingly.

Thor finally said, "Why did you come here, Val?"

"You got through to me after I drowned my sorrows in alcohol. You pulled me up by the bootstraps to save Asgard," Valkyrie said.

"We did a great job of doing _that_, didn't we?" Thor scoffed.

"I didn't come here to rub your failure in your face or even to congratulate you on your kill. I came to pull my friend up by the bootstraps, because that is what you did for me," Valkyrie said, a flicker of pain in her strong voice. She was just like him, once—enjoyed being like him, living in a constant state of drunken reality. Nothing could truly hurt her or remind her of the past as long as her alcohol kept it at bay. But that was barely a life —a half of a life, really. He brought her back to some purpose, brought some meaning back into her life—friendship, honor in battle, saving Asgard. To see them flipped was like watching a past memory. Her mirror image was a disgusting, suffering mess. She understood why he couldn't stay like this and yet understood why he wanted to.

She offered her hand. "Help me lead Asgard. It's your destiny."

Thor scoffed. "You know, I don't think it ever really was."

Valkyrie sighed in disgust as he sank back into his rank chair. "This is it, then? This is how you're going to live out in the After? Getting drunk, playing stupid video games?" she said, waving a hand to Korg and Miek.

"Hey, Fortnite is a global phenomenon," Korg said, to Miek's sounds of agreement.

Valkyrie rolled her eyes. "Fighting battles on TVs are _nothing _like real life." But, she turned back to Thor. "Are you never going to enter the village? Ever gonna leave this house, leave that chair?"

"I have to go to the fridge, to get the beer," Thor pointed out.

Valkyrie waved a hand. "I'm done. I'm done with you." She stopped halfway out the door to look at him one last time. She knew it was the grief talking, not Thor. He held onto it like a frightened child to a blanket, for grief was all that he had left. "Maybe leading Asgard isn't your destiny. But, Thor, don't stay here."

"I can't hear you over the sound of my drinking," Thor said, blocking out her worry as he poured several glass bottles of beer into his gallon mug.

Valkyrie rolled her eyes and slammed the door. That was it. She had it with this boar-headed son of Odin.

Every time she visited that house once a week for months on end, trying to get into his stupid head, she slammed the door and declared she was done. But she always came back. There was very little she had left in this world, and he was there. She wouldn't give up on him.

When Professor Hulk and a strange rabbit thing rolled into town, Valkyrie gave them his location. Good luck to them. They could darn well try. It wasn't that she'd given up on him. She just didn't know what would make him want to fight again.

Well, her fellow Revenger gave him something to avenge, some vengeance she could never have given him. It didn't matter that _she _couldn't give it to him. What mattered was that he got it. She was grateful to Professor Hulk (though she'd never admit it) that _somebody _was able to get him out of his seemingly endless path of self-destruction, by offering him a tiny bit of something that he desperately needed that she couldn't give him.

Thor didn't need peace. He needed hope.

**Valkyrie and Thor friendship is so good. **

**I wanted a mix of humor and sadness, which I think is pretty much what Thor has always been, so I hope I wrote that well.**

**Thanks for reading! Review?**


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